


Anything At All

by Jeevey



Category: U2 (Band)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:40:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21794695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeevey/pseuds/Jeevey
Summary: St Patrick's Day, 1992
Relationships: The Edge (U2)/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know. Why would anyone write an OFC story about U2 when there's Bono and Edge? Moreover, why would anyone write a _ZOO TV fic_ about an OFC instead of slashing the fuck out of those two as they are obviously gagging for?
> 
> Well, things happen is all. Sometimes the fic writes itself. Plus, Likeamadonna has already done Close/Closer/Closest and I'm never gonna top that, so here you go.

Bono was busy making friends and declamations as Edge leaned back in the local car and watched the late-winter streets roll by.

“You said your name is Lewis?” Bono was saying to the driver. He pronounced the named with satisfaction. “Well, Lewis, I have to tell you that I adore Boston as much as I admire your driving, and also that we are terribly, terribly hungry.” He leaned forward confidentially. “Breakfast in Providence was shit so can you please take us someplace to eat, not too greasy and not too crowded, and can you take us by the Big Dig on the way there? A place with no windows? That would be fantastic, Lewis.”

Edge rested his head against the seat. For a little minute everything was balanced; all the months of planning, the smoky tense conception of the tour, the obsessive diagramming of every detail were compressed into a moment of everything being just fine. 

The sheer size of this tour was almost incomprehensible, and yet it was working. Reviews of the early shows were admiringly bewildered and the buzz increased daily. After a few weeks they were all gaining confidence that even while they sat in that car the gears were turning: with fifty trucks and hundreds of crew, a city was being raised overnight and tuned to fever pitch. He felt like a rope walker; resilient, elastic, able to go on holding up the whole gigantic enterprise for ever. It was a perfect, indefinitely sustainable tension. The adrenaline thrum which never left his chest said comfortably, “ This is no trouble at all. We can go on like this for a long while yet.”

“Do you know what I love about Boston, Edge?” Bono interrupted his thoughts. “It's a lot like Dublin, only American, you know, with much better restaurants. The fucked up streets, the nepotism, the jowly faces of the cops, and the way you can tell they thought it all up on the fly. Look at that.” He pointed at the rearing concrete dead ends and looping half-circles of abbreviated on-ramps. “New York or LA could never have this. Only a city government full of men married to each others' sisters could have allowed this to happen.”

“I don't know about you, but I could allow a little quiet to happen.” Edge said to Adam on his other side.

Adam nodded sagely. “After five o'clock this town is going to get wild. No rest for the weary then.”

“After the show I'll be ready for it, but right now I'm perishing. It'll be impossible to get food later on. I'll get a table, you get the beer. Not green.”

Adam shuddered. “God, no.” he said. “What do you take me for?”

Down in the dim cellar Edge slid into a tall table by the pool racks. Lewis had in fact found them a place with high narrow windows revealing the boots of walkers outside, which purported to serve some fresh foods along with its slabs of American beef. He drew a grateful breath. Later on he would be ready for Boston’s biggest party, but right now he was feeling peculiarly peaceful. All he wanted was something to eat, a decent tap, and no crowds.

No crowds had recently come to mean no women almost by definition, and that was the case now. Aside from the Principle Management women that traveled with them there was only a waitress filling pints. Three o'clock solemnence ran deep here under the street level. He turned his attention to the chalk-written specials board.

“A jukebox!” Bono crowed from across the room. “Does anyone have any money?” After an interval Public Enemy came on. Other cars of crew were arriving and it began to get loud. 

Although a complete mindfuck, Edge mused, tour life was also very, very easy in its way. In contrast, calling home to talk to his girls and their mother made him nearly puke with anxiety. He had to mentally prepare an hour beforehand just to remember how to talk to people on the outside. The tiny intimacies of family life, all the myriad duties and capitulations of home... he didn't miss it. A life of unrestrained, undistracted work was beautifully simple. He became aware of someone speaking at his elbow.

“Pardon?”

The little waitress before him gave a skeptical look. “Can I get you anything to drink today?” she repeated. She was, he saw, entirely made of small firm circles, from her smooth flared calves up around the mirrored curves of hips and waist, to breasts as small and round as apples. He looked back at the board, disconcerted.

“A beer would be great. Any good local is fine.”

“Anything to eat?”

“I'd love that. What's best?”

“The burgers are very good,” she said. He recognized the neutral tone of waitstaff recommending a dull but popular menu item.

“Em, I'm afraid America has burgered me out. Do you have anything less heavy?”

She smiled then, round cheeks blooming. “I'll bet you want the spinach and salmon salad with honey mustard vinaigrette.”

“I think you're right. That will be great.” He liked the compact, capable look of her hands. “Thanks very much--” he paused for her name. She said something that sounded like “Sho-bade”. He asked her to repeat it, raising his voice over the jukebox.

“Here.” She wrote in big letters on the back of her tab sheet, S-O-L-V-E-I-G and leaned close, partly shouting. “SOL- vay.”

He looked at her, resting on her elbows over his table. Her eyes had a distinct north European tilt, creased at the corners. “Is that... Norwegian?”

“Danish. My parents, anyway. They came here for school and stayed.” He sat looking at her until she shrugged. “Well, I'll get your beer, then.”

He watched her walk back to the bar. She wore a dark pair of men's trousers cut off just below the knee, against which her round backside pressed like peaches. Under the bar lights her breasts were delicately tipped through her shifting shirt. But that couldn't be. He squinted. Even in Boston, was a girl allowed to come to work without a bra? When she came back with his beer he was studiously watching Bono and Adam throw darts.

“So, you're not from America?” she asked, setting down a dark amber glass.

He coughed. Her look was direct, holding neither irony nor avarice. It made him think of something that he couldn't name.

“No, I'm not." How long was it since anyone had needed to ask him that? "I grew up in Ireland.”

“And you’re with these guys?” She nodded towards Bono, resplendent in black leather, gesturing widely.

He covered his discomfort with the pint. “Em, yeah. We play in a rock and roll band.”

“Oh. Oh, I know who you guys are, I think. There was a movie for a minute. ” Edge sighed. If she knew only one thing about him, he would have preferred that it wasn't their great moment of universal public skewering.

“Well, sort of," he said. "I mean, that's what we were doing a few years ago, but it's all quite different now. The tour, the sound and the look have all changed from what you hear on the radio.” He floundered. He was speaking to a woman who didn't know or care what he did for a living and he had no idea what to say to her. “It's less rootsy, more European dance, more high distortion and ironic performance art.” Jesus, he sounded like a twat and worse, was unable to stop searching her shoulder for a bra strap. There was none, just the white eyelet band of a weightless camisole like a little girl might wear.

“Sounds like fun.” She had dimple on one side. He hesitated a moment. 

“Would you like to see it? If you're not working later on?”

“Oh, I'd love to but I don't think I can. I have a gig of my own when I get out.”

“You have a gig. Do you sing?” he asked. She was probably a singer-songwriter, wearing those tatty clothes.

“I play fiddle in a techno contradance band,” she said, and waited. Edge thought he knew quite a lot about music but found himself obliged to knuckle under. 

“I'm afraid I don't know what that is.”

“Well, you're from Ireland. You must have seen a ceilhi dance?” she asked. He had in fact seen them prancing through the dance hall windows as a kid but never gone in. 

“It's a bit like that but more American; more raucous and not very polite.”

“I don't know that much about traditional music,” he said. In fact American roots music and the Edge had had a depressingly conventional celebrity relationship; a highly publicized fling and a sour breakup. The critics had not been kind.

“I do. This isn't it.” She grinned at his quizzical look. “Really. My partner and I do a lot of looping and sound manipulation, and we have a dj scratch for us. It's a lot of fun.”

“I'd like to hear that.” He liked the way that she spoke to him, and he liked the shadowed shape of her body under her wide-necked shirt.

“You should.” The dimple again. “We run til about one. Could you make it over after your show? It'll be a little busy because of St Patrick's Day.”

He was smiling, ridiculously, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I could do that.”

Adam came sliding into the table now, passing over one of the beers he carried. Edge looked from it to the one in his hand, awkwardly aware of that curious American drinking taboo, _one pint at a time._ But Solveig didn't notice; she was listening to Adam introduce himself.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Solveig. I always love to come back to Boston. It's one of our favorites.” The smooth bastard pronounced her name without difficulty and regarded her a moment. “Now, you must be Danish, but your accent isn't. How did that come to be?”

Oh, for fucks sake. 

While she explained and asked for his order Adam glanced at Edge, who gave him the pained, stony look of a man about to be cockblocked.

Blessedly, Adam could switch gears as easily as he chatted up. With only a polite blink in Edge’s direction he said, “Solvieg, I am starving. Would you please bring me whatever my friend here ordered? I find that his taste is very, very reliable.”

She made a note of his order, then carefully scrawled an address on a clean sheet and placed it in front of Edge. 

“This is where I'll be tonight.” She paused a moment. “You forgot to tell me your name.”

He hadn't forgotten, though.

“Edge," he said finally.

She repeated it and turned back to the kitchen, smiling to herself. Adam watched her go with rising eyebrows, then turned back to look at Edge, lips pursed in a silent whistle. Suddenly Edge remembered the name for the directness of her look, the way she seemed to ask of him without wanting anything from him. It was kindness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just thinking about it reminded him of why he'd gotten married to his first real girlfriend.

The band came laughing into the dressing room at Boston Garden with the roar of the stage behind them. 

"I think that's the loudest room we've ever played to," said Larry, rubbing his ears. "Felt like they were sitting on our bleeding heads."

"And our crowd was friendly. Can you imagine being the Lakers going in there?" Edge asked.

Bono shook his head. 

"That's different. A basketball player knows he's going to get booed when he goes into someone else's house. It’s part of the job. Even so, I wouldn't want to be in their place." 

"Then all the Irish girls in Boston really would eat you alive," Adam grinned, with a swat to Bono's backside. 

"Give me twenty minutes and I'll be ready for all of them. Christ, I'm knackered." Bono stripped off the shiny jacket, handed it to their dresser, Nassim, and took the water bottle that she already held out. "Great job out there on Dirty Old Town tonight, Larry. By the way, Shane McGowan called. He wants his song back, or he's taking the performance fees out of your arse."

"Send him in," said Larry, stretching comfortably. "Tell him he can have my dentist appointment on Tuesday, too, poor bastard."

Edge began pulling off his sweaty stage clothes out of habit, and then stopped. He'd need to dress for Solvieg. Just thinking about it put a pit in his stomach that reminded him of why he'd gotten married to his first real girlfriend. He looked at the clock.

"Adam," he said quietly. "I have a taxi coming in a few minutes to go find Solvieg at the club. Do you want to ride along?"

"You know I do. Edge goes to find the first woman he's noticed in two years? I wouldn't miss it for the world." 

The ears of the others caught this, inevitably, and five heads swiveled toward him like magnets. 

"Edge has a date to go meet Solvieg the Danish barmaid," Adam explained.

"Solveig the visionary Danish barmaid?" Bono cried. "She's incredible. How did you do it, Edge? You must kiss her for me. In fact, I'll make you a list of all the things you have to do to her for me--"

"No," Edge interrupted, "That's really okay. I don't actually want to talk about it at all. I just need to get dressed." He looked warily at the open flight cases of wardrobe.

"Date clothes!" Fintan cried. "Let me towel your hair, and then we are going to dress you to knock her socks off." 

Eyes alight with trouble, their scrappy stylist beckoned Nassim to leave Bono’s clothes to himself. Edge was pushed into the shower, stripped, swiped, and towelled, scrambling all while for the dignity of doing something himself. He felt like Cinderella surrounded by twittering seamstress birds in the cartoon that kept his kids quiet on Saturday mornings. At length he stood in fresh trousers before a row of deeply interested faces. 

"There's that, of course," said Nassim, handing him a black undershirt. "And for the over shirt... should he wear purple?"

Fintan shook his head, eyes narrowed as though considering a mannequin display. "He's better in red." 

"I like purple," said Bono interjected.

"Yes, but _women_ like red." Fintan held the red shirt up to Nassim as Exhibit A. 

"White." 

All heads turned towards Larry, standing with his thumbs hooked in his belt. 

"Hey, guys. Larry thinks he should wear white." Adam announced. They dissolved in snickers. "Larry, did you know that there are clothes other than a white T shirt?"

“Larry doesn’t own anything other than white. Do you?” Bono asked.

"You know how it works, then." Larry showed the wolfish grin that had gotten him many things, including once a ride on Elvis's motorcycle.

"Well, but this is Edge, not you," Bono objected.

"Hey, what exactly does that mean?" Edge said.

Larry shrugged. "It's up to him. Does he want to look like a rock star or the man she's dying to shag her?"

"I don’t understand how those aren’t the same thing," Bono said.

"White button down,” Larry said, ignoring him. "Cuffs up over the forearm. Four buttons done." 

After a long look at him, Edge held out his hand for the white shirt. They all watched him put it on.

"No graphics on the hat, either,” Larry added. “Plain knit cap." Having delivered the final oracle on date clothes, Larry went to get a beer and left them all gawping as if he had been the Spirit of God. 

Nassim silently passed the hat over. Edge straightened it over his brows. The weight of four pairs of eyes was as great as any stadium he'd played to. He buttoned the shirt, just four, leaving a broad triangle of chest exposed, and cuffed the sleeves.

"By Christ, he was right,” Fintan said. “You'll do, Edge. You’ll do." 

They stood gazing mistily at him like so many fond mothers snapping photos before a secondary school dance. All, that is, except for the unmotherly gleam in Adam's eye.

"Edge, dear,” he began, “There's one more thing we should talk about before you go.” Bono emitted a choked snort. "Things have changed, you know, since the last time you were out with a new girl."

The dressing room was abruptly, unbearably hot. "I think I'll figure it out," Edge said as evenly as he could.

"There are certain precautions a boy needs to take, both for himself as well as for the sake of the girl he's with," Adam continued with perfect seriousness, hands folded primly over his knee. Bono and Fintan broke up completely.

"That's it, I'm out," Edge said. "Taxi in ten if you still want to come." He bolted from the room, pelted by a cascade of shiny silver packets.

* * * * *

Edge was watching the clock closely as he made his appearance in the swirling afterparty. All the Irish and the wishful of Boston were eager to begin their St Patrick's day drinking with Ireland's favorite sons, and the room was packed. Edge wondered where he might take Solvieg to avoid them once the crawl began. 

He made a conspicuous entry, being careful to show himself to Paul, the Principal staff, and most importantly his own security man. After a few minutes of ostentatious chatting he tucked a beer into either rear pocket and worked his way toward the edges of the room. Just short of the door he turned to check for anyone watching and beheld Bono standing on a chair in the sea of revelers, waving his arms like a semaphore and mouthing the words, "Kiss her for me--like this--" Edge escaped through deserted halls into the night.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Edge, what sort of mad Valhalla have you brought me to?"
> 
> "I can't tell yet."

Edge paused beside Adam at the top of the stairs, halted by the throbbing electronic bass lines. He squinted into the flashing strobe lights, trying to make sense of the heaving, symmetrical pit of motion. Somewhere up front someone was laying down loops on a synthesized acoustic guitar- two, then three, and a fourth, a beat pounded out on its side.

"Edge, what sort of mad Valhalla have you brought me to?"

"I don't know, I can't tell yet." Solvieg was right; this was like a very badly mannered ceilidh dance. In fact, it looked as though his grandmother's ceilidh had taken a couple hits of MDMA and gone to a rave. In the erratic flashes of light, he discerned the crowd packed elbow to elbow in double lines that met and split in swirling figures of four, two and eight. A word from a caller rang out now and then to change the figures, but unlike any dance he'd ever walked by in Ireland the crowded bodies were young, beautiful and very slightly dressed. Nearest them one couple took a tortuously long 8 count to grind before linking hands for, as the disembodied caller said, a "star left." Adam gained the salient point at once.

"Does it look like you take a turn to touch every woman on the floor by the end of the song?"

Edge felt his mental eyebrows go up as the same girl twirled away to stop up against a new man. "Yes. Yes, it does."

"And where's your girl?"

"There." He pointed toward the front, where her shining head gleamed just visible over the dancers.

'Well, if you're set for a bit I can see that I have some business to attend to." Adam said. Bemused, Edge watched him find a strange girl and lead her out onto the floor in about thirty seconds, head tilted close to hear her and looking perfectly at ease. Smooth bastard, he thought, and began to thread his way to the front.

He stopped well back of the low stage to survey the scene. A skinny boy with an enormous white-man's afro stood working the turntable, shouting a call into the microphone now and then. At the front sat Solvieg and a young man like a bear, each with a hand-built pedal board at their feet. Edge was seized with immediate, unreasoning jealousy. The young bear was big enough to dwarf the neck of the tricked-out acoustic guitar in his hands, and Edge didn't care for the laughing look he gave to Solvieg one bit.

She drummed her feet against the floor, her whole body moving with a suppressed energy as her fingers moved across the fingerboard of her instrument. It was a kind of thing that Edge hadn't seen before; like a fiddle but narrow and nearly solid bodied, making far too much noise for what he could see her doing. He counted carefully. There were at least four layers of sound there- percussive pops, rhythmic chops and eight bar loops over which she played a distorted melody. He could have kissed her right there for her little round toes, the mark of concentration between her brows, the straight fall of her hair to her chin. But---she slid another look toward her partner, a signal of some sort. No, Edge was quite sure that he didn't like the elated look on the young man’s face at all.

Edge watched as he laid one loop over another, a heavy 6/8 pattern stamped onto a wooden board on the floor wired for sound, then an 8 bar vamp and a bassy rhythm line. Edge had never seen fiddle tunes played this way, and he was torn between twin desires to watch it happen and to give up and dance. The young bear resolved his own dilemma by setting down his guitar. He carefully checked his levels and then flung himself off the stage into the dance, raising cheers from the crowded floor.

Now Solvieg moved further into the light. The dj kicked up the tempo and the music began to rise. She was standing now, stamping her sturdy little foot, leaning into the music. Edge recognized the look on her face from having worn it himself a hundred times: blind trance, sheer transport. He knew she wouldn't know him or anyone else now; she was in that other place and was going to take them all with her. He moved closer. She threw back her head and yelled, a long rising whoop that brought an answering roar from the crowd and the young bear tearing back from their midst. He flung himself back into his chair and settled a long, twisted, tubular thing on a stand in front of him. 

As he began to blow into it, Solvieg flipped off her loops one by one. There was only the repetitive thump of the dj and a deep steady nasal drone from the long thing. Edge searched his memory. A digeridoo, from Australia. He mentally chalked up a point to traditional American music for innovation.

The stamps of the dancers were still increasing as the bear began to build up a driving rhythmic guitar line, still maintaining the buss of the digeridoo. Edge saw that Solvieg had seen him now. She flashed a quick, distracted grin without breaking the thrum of her body and began to stroke a steady pop on the lower strings, marking time. She looked at the bear and they shifted tunes seamlessly, and the dancers shouted in approval. Edge knew that fiddle tunes were played in sets of three, but why did he recognize this one? He didn't know any fiddle tunes. The rest of the club knew it too, many of them shouting along as they circled, whirled and swung. It couldn't be...but it was. Solvieg was playing Smells Like Teen Spirit retrofitted as some sort of crazy grandmother dance reel--and she was about to lift the roof with it. It was becoming impossible to stand still. Edge caught a glimpse of Adam, circling around the strange girl, foreheads pressed together and gazes locked. The whole scene was rife with a turbocharged eroticism, moves that would have passed unnoticed in an ordinary club amplified to near indecency when repeated a hundred times in unison. He recognized that critical moment when a good show passes over into the ecstatic, and he gave himself up to it.

Edge was dizzy, breathless and faintly confused when the music finally ended. The whole room roared applause at the musicians, who stood and cheered back. The lights came up a little and an ordinary club song came on. He waited a moment to catch his breath before pushing his way over to where Solvieg was carefully packing her fiddle away. He gazed at her for a minute before she saw him there and came down from the stage.

"That was incredible," he said.

"Thanks." She seemed unaccountably more shy than earlier. "It's a lot of fun. It's not Boston Garden or anything, but this is always a really great room for us." She trailed off. "Let me introduce you to the guys. That's Jordy, our Mixmaster Mike, and this is Ivor." She waved at the young bear, who came stepping over cords, stands, and boxes to stand in front of Edge. "My partner in crime and getaway driver, both."

Edge couldn't help prickling a little. This bastard was six inches taller than him at the least and had a lot of hair, not to mention a disarmingly open expression. Edge tucked his resentment carefully behind his eyes. He was a wealthy and successful man, for God's sake, not the new kid in the play yard.

Ivor held out his hand with a grin. "Hey, nice to meet you. I hear you're a guitar player too. What do you play?"

"Em... I play in a rock and roll band. I have a Gibson Explorer I like to use a lot."

Solvieg broke in. "Ivor, are you okay doing the load out tonight?"

"Sure thing. We'll catch up later in the week." Ivor began to pack up the cords into cases. Edge and Solvieg were left looking at each other a little awkwardly.

"Em. I don't know much about Boston. Where would you like to go?"

"I have a few ideas," she said. "I was thinking of a little food and not too loud first, if that works for you."

"Sure." He should be up front with her. Or at least he thought he should. "I’m sorry. Is Ivor your... Are you together?"

She laughed. Thank God, she laughed. 

"No! Ivor's a great musician, but it would be like dating a basketful of puppies; just too much. But he always drives the equipment to gigs and he doesn't drag his groupies to rehearsal, so it works out fine. I was just going to change before we go, if that's all right. I get a little sweaty up there."

He laid his hand on her back in sheer relief. 

"Wow, I guess so. Don't go out like that; you'll catch your death."

"I'm sorry.” She rumpled the wet ends of her hair self consciously. “That's probably not very feminine."

He stepped in close to inhale the scent of sweat from her neck, very light and warm and faintly musky.

"That," he said, "might be the most feminine thing I've ever encountered. Go on and change, and I'll buy you a beer."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sort of trad techno Solvieg and Ivor play didn't actually exist in 1992, but I wanted it here anyway. As best as I can tell, this style of fiddle was evolved by Ed Howe and John Cote of Perpetual Emotion in the late 90s. They have since disbanded, but you can still see some of their work on youtube, and it's a mighty good time.


End file.
